


Compatible

by elbowsinsidethedoor



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: M/M, a companion piece to Incompatible by Zaniida
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 19:23:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elbowsinsidethedoor/pseuds/elbowsinsidethedoor
Summary: Zaniida extended an invitation to write a John POV piece to accompany her excellent story, Incompatible, and I accepted!





	Compatible

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Incompatible](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10780029) by [Zaniida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida). 



Once he realized that he wasn’t being lectured, corrected, or reprimanded, John felt a warmth overtake him. Harold was speaking about himself, about his feelings for him.

Of all the ways he’d thought something might happen between them, he’d never envisioned it beginning with a long speech.

He tried to pay attention to every word. It wasn’t easy. He got side-tracked by things Harold had gotten wrong. He didn’t interrupt to correct him but by the time he caught up with the flow, he crashed headlong into knowing that Harold wanted him.

Wanted him. Not sex. Not sex. Maybe sex.

Harold had a hundred words for every one John could think of uttering. He was describing himself as if he had some rare condition. Of course it would be rare. Everything about Harold was rare, different.

The library was warm. Bear was sprawled in his bed. Somehow hints of spring had penetrated the shrouds that draped the building. It was in the light. Even obscured, the quality of the light had changed. Harold’s suits had changed, lighter fabric. He was wearing a beautiful shirt, a color like lavender.

He was telling a story about Nathan Ingram. John conjured up the photograph that had fallen from the pages of a book, a younger Harold with his friend. A name that Harold had called him when he was drugged.

Pay attention. He was talking about Grace. About his virginity. About what he thought John wanted.

“So it comes down to our fundamental incompatibility: I yearn for intimacy in mind and emotions as well as body, while you’re not the type to open up that much to any man. Yet without that intimacy, I have no desire for a sexual relationship, the one thing you’re after. Each of us needs what the other cannot, or will not, give.”

So wrong, but John did not speak.

He wanted the cascade of words, the push and pull of them, to end. Harold wanted him. Didn’t want him. Thought it couldn’t work, thought it could work.

“I am willing to meet, or at least attempt to meet, whatever physical or sexual desires you find most pressing. Bearing in mind, of course, my physical limitations and, well, a certain aversion to the idea of some of the kinkier… activities. Though I’m willing to experiment -- should it come to that. That’s … what I’m offering. Not that you are under any compulsion to accept; it simply seemed to me the most effective solution for our respective problems. And of course, if I’ve misjudged the situation, I-- ah… Mr. Reese?”

“Are you finished?”

He must be, John thought. Through all of it Harold had not made eye contact, gazing at the window, at his own hands near his keyboard, glancing down at Bear. Now he had turned his chair and was looking at him carefully, searching his face, trying to read him. The color had risen in his cheeks and John could see the rise and fall of his breathing. His mouth was slightly open behind closed lips as if he might speak but the lips didn’t part.

“Come sit with me," John said. "You can touch me as much ... or as little, as you want.”

He watched Harold swallow, saw his lips compress as he considered it. Then the man looked down, closing his eyes, turning away and John understood he had to help him. He was up and across the space quickly. It was a relief to move, to take action. Harold looked up, a little startled. He looked at the hand John was holding out to him. He frowned.

This is the moment, John thought. The end of how things had been, the beginning of how things would be, if Harold could cross the bridge of words he’d built and … touch him.

He’d gotten so much wrong. Fusco. Zoe. What John wanted. Needed. Harold had studied his history to try to understand him without understanding that it was the story of his failures, of what he’d settled for.

It didn’t matter. Harold was taking his hand and John breathed deep. He couldn’t help but smile as Harold rose slowly from his chair, moved bravely across the few inches that separated them and into his arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The End Is Near](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10850016) by [Tipsylex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsylex/pseuds/Tipsylex)




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